Are we entering a new era of digital democracy--or just being conned
by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?

That's easy - Just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking marketers
(not really geeks, with a few almost accidental exceptions, or only
using the term in a very expansive sense). Next question?

It's been depressing to watch the classic bogospheric scenario play out over
this. Somebody writes an article with some debunking overall. A-list reaction
follows predictable themes and personal attack: Old Media, Doesn't Get It,
accusations of various and sundry sins, lots of
potkettleblack. The targets go around in comments trying to get people to think about what they actually wrote, rather than what was ranted against. But it's ultimately a fool's errand. Because for all the hype of the power of links and original sources, the ability of a tiny oligarchy of gatekeepers to direct attention insures that their statements dominate the discussion. I can't think of a more recursive disproof of blog-evangelism :-(.

In the actual stories (and 27 interviews with various bloggers, politicos, and digerati) we/they say there's a lot to be excited about in terms of the political applications of 2.0 technology, and the larger philosophical promise: that old school political hacks might be forced to give up on top-down messaging. However, we also say that some in the netroots have gotten a little drunk with power, and that some of the technological applications have yet to prove that they can have a real impact on electoral politics, fun as they might be.

Putting aside the big issue of "electoral politics" for the moment,
try even having a real impact on so-called discussions. And no, I don't consider
it thrilling to connect-with-people in comment threads or Z-list
blogs that almost nobody reads, and will be ignored if doing so serves
someone's interest.

After the blogger's capacity for frustration is exceeded, he does an about face and, instead of seeking inclusion in the conversations, he rejects the entire process completely. At this point, the tailspin towards abandonment has begun. ... Some blogs exist in a near perpetual state of alienation. Eventually, the alienation gives way to abandonment.

Google Privacy Fluff

There's never going to be an official answer which says "Security?
What security? We believe in open sourcing our business records. We don't
take any precautions, anyone whatsoever can traipse through them at will".

It's important to understand that there's a difference between
privacy, and business confidential data. Google's
logs fall under both regimes. In many instances, the same incentives
apply. But what happens when there's a difference? This is the
argument I keep having with some of Google defender's - the
Google Search Subpoena case was NOT a
privacy case. Google's objections were mainly about
business confidential data, which they then
"spun" as privacy. Posturing about the extensive procedures
Google takes to protect its business records is not
wrong, but it's not about privacy either.

We don't know about
what happens in serious privacy challenges.
There's no way to independently check on Google's statements.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit
against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of
violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating
with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive, illegal
program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications."

AT&T surely could have a spokesflacker say all sorts of things
about how seriously they protect customer privacy. Without some
independent checks, taking such statements on faith is not
warranted (pun unintended but still relevant)

Doc wondered if I might be willing to help or contribute somehow to
the conversation about vendor relationship management. I told him I
was skeptical. I think anything that facilitates commercial
interactions, does so at the expense of social ones. It's not that I
regard all companies as "evil," though most of them are far from
"virtuous." As I explained to him, even if all companies were "good,"
they still must compete with one another for our time and
attention. And the universe of competing commercial entities seems to
grow without limit; and they are all learning organisms, so they adapt
to changes in their environment, and exploit anything that can give
them a commercial advantage.

Unfortunately, what is hailed as "conversation" really boils down to "chum".
...
I think some of what passes for credibility online ties in with the
old wheeze about prostitutes, buildings, and politicians becoming more
respectable with age.

Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would
immediately link to it, hoping he might link back. ...
In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren't doing
so because they think he is the world's greatest authority on arm
farting. They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping
Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by.

Disclaimer: This post is (obviously!) not sponsored by Microsoft,
or anyone else. Nobody gave me anything of value for it. In fact,
it's dubious if this is anything other than a waste of time (as
opposed to a source of income ...).

Readership Statistics on Goring Gorman's Google Grump

The
Michael Gorman / Google post I wrote a few days ago was significant effort to do original work, and, I thought,
something worth flacking around to various
gatekeepers. So, I tried one high-volume place (which didn't accept it), and a few librarian-oriented sites, and left some comments. Here's the readership results, from referer logs (unique IPs).

All in all, adding in the 100 or so people that seem to actually read
the article from feeds or site in general, it looks like that post got around
a total of 600 readers. I hate to say it, but it's another example of,
given the effort involved in research, writing, *and* flacking, it's
not worth it.

An earlier Britannica post did get noticed by some other interesting blogs, e.g. Link Spiel.
I'm also among interesting company (though sadly just seven hits richer) from
Frank Paynter's
link list:

Google: 1, Michael Gorman: 0

"If you can't Google it, it doesn't exist" is a common saying of Jimmy
Wales and his ilk - a remark that gives shallowness a bad name. It
does, however, illustrate neatly a state of mind that has turned away
from learning and scholarship and swallowed -- hook, line, and sinker
-- every banal piece of digital hype. There are intellectual
treasures of all kinds in libraries and archives throughout the world
that are not available on Google, and, because of the defects of all
search engines using free-text searching, would not be retrievable
using Google even if every last word in them were digitized. Mr. Wales
may place no importance on anything other than information in digital
form, but we owe more than that to the young. There is a life beyond
the search engine -- a life of richness and nuance undreamed of in
Mr. Wales's philosophy -- and all teachers at all levels of education
must insist that their students use primary sources and authoritative
secondary sources in their papers and studies, regardless whether
these sources are digitized. Further, they should emphasize the
acquisition of research and critical thinking skills applied to the
human record in all its variety.

Unfortunately, before we even get to the Googling, Michael Gorman fell
down here on the critical thinking skills. While he certainly can't be
expected to be a Jimmy Wales worshipper, hanging on the pronouncements
of the guru of work-for-free, it's pretty easy to know that Wales
doesn't believe something so strawmannish as the impression given
above. If anything, his general line could be attacked as being much
more slick, that this stuff is bad for you if you use it to the
exclusion of everything else, but you shouldn't do that (and
implicitly, if you do, it's your fault, don't go blaming the
wonderful wisdom of crowds for steering you wrong, you should have
checked anyway).

Anyway, Michael Gorman put a correction in the comments of the thread:

I have heard from Mr. (Jimmy) Wales himself, that he not only has not
written "If you can't Google it, it doesn't exist" but also that this
quotation is directly opposite to his actual views. I had read the
quotation attributed to him in the New Yorker article by Stacy Schiff
(July 31 2006) - "Wales, in his public speeches, cites the Google
test: ``If it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist''" - and had
not seen the attribution disputed. However, I was remiss in not
checking further before I published this essay. I apologize to
Mr. Wales unreservedly and wish, not for the first time, that the
saying "A lie is half way around the world before the truth has its
boots on" was not so spot on.

The best part of this whole stupid Gorman thing yet: in a blog post on
shoddy research, he misquotes Jimmy Wales based on a printed
source. And has to apologize. The irony! The laughs! The sheer idiocy
of this whole exercise!

I did not "misquote" Mr. Wales. I read that he had said those words in
public speeches in the New Yorker article. It's probably counter to
the snide ethic of blogs, but I chose to accept his statement that,
despite the unrefuted statement in the New Yorker, he had not said and
did not believe those words.

Now comes the problem of who do you believe? One thread commenter:

Actually, Gorman cites the New Yorker article accurately, and the New Yorker does its homework and fact-checking and interviewed Wales extensively for the piece. Funny, Wales waits one year to complain about being misquoted? waits until he's on the hot seat and being criticized in this forum? ...but he had no problem with this quote when it merely was contained in the puff-ball New Yorker piece (that also contained the Essjay lies to boot)? Hmmm... .And this reflects badly on Gorman? How convenient for Wales to remember he never said this... .(Gorman is actually being gracious and letting Jimmy off the hook! I doubt I would if I were Gorman.)

Part of the problem is provenance. The bulk of Wikipedia's content
originates not in the stacks but on the Web, which offers up
everything from breaking news, spin, and gossip to proof that the moon
landings never took place. Glaring errors jostle quiet
omissions. Wales, in his public speeches, cites the Google test: "If
it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist." This position poses another
difficulty: on Wikipedia, the present takes precedent over the past.

Well, it turns out this can be determined by ... THE GOOGLE. It's a little
more difficult than is apparent, since it seems the reporter tightened the
quote. There's no independent reference for "If it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist".
What you have to search for is "it probably doesn't exist".
And then one finds speech transcripts such as:

"But there are other cases where it's borderline. Where you might say,
I'm not sure if this is a hoax, if this is real, is this not real, and
the example here was a film called Twisted Issues, an obscure
underground punk film from 1988. The funny thing is, I gave a talk
just two days ago at the University of Florida, and the next day
somebody wrote me and said, "Do you know I played on the soundtrack
for Twisted Issues." I said, wow really, go ahead and edit the
article, really, so anyway, so the first person says it's supposedly
an underground punk film, but it miserably fails the Google test. So
what's the Google test. You look something up in Google, and if you
can't find it, then it probably doesn't exist. It's -- this is not a
foolproof test, but it's pretty good. Right? There are still a few
things on the planet that are not in Google. But it's pretty good. And
so it fails the Google test, and it doesn't have any listing, so a
couple people say, "delete, delete." And then somebody says "Hey wait
wait wait wait, I found something. It's in the Film Threat Video Guide
to 20 Underground Films You Must See. So maybe it has some
notability. Next person down says, complete it. Next person says, it's
a real movie, it's in IMDB, keep keep." So at the end of a discussion
like this, this would have been kept. In fact it was kept, and the
article's still there."

Verdict: From the full section above, I think Jimmy Wales is being taken out
of context. He's clearly talking about a narrow circumstance of
determining whether something is a hoax or not. And note in the
debate Wales uses as an example, a print reference book is actually being cited as evidence.

Britannica Blog Link-Baits from Google to Copyright/P2P to Kids Today

I must confess I'm fascinated by Britannica Blog's Link-Bait experiment.
Now the topic's on about Google, copyright, plagiarism, and those
rotten kids. It's like someone sat down with the A-list
Blogger's Playbook, and asked the question "How do we make this
gimmick work for us?"

Someone seems to have thought to themselves: "OK A-lister, you say
that in order to prosper in this brave new media world, the thing to
do is become a talk-radio type flamefest. There should be lots of
ranting against The Enemy, and lots of stroking of the audience that
they're the bestest ever. We can do that. You didn't invent snark, we
had snottiness a long time ago. Except we won't do it in
terms of the anti-pointy-headed-intellectual shtick that you favor,
but apply it to a besieged-culturalist routine that appeals
to our audience."

I still can't figure out if they've been corrupted even as they
outbait the baiters, or whether they've shown the upstarts how it's
really done.

See
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/06/the-siren-song-of-the-internet-part-ii/

Question: Would it make sense for search engines, only in carefully
limited, delineated, and serious situations, to provide on some search
results a "Disputed Page" link to information explaining the dispute
in detail, as an available middle ground between complete non-action
and total page take downs?

In my view, it's a brave thought, but it won't happen. We've got to
start thinking of search engines as media companies, because that's
what they are (I don't claim this insight to be original - lots of
people point it out in regard to their advertising business model).
The search results are their content, and they do a very standard
business model of selling targets ads around that content.

This then gets into the issue of speech and libel law for Internet service
businesses, which is a very complicated topic. Can an algorithm output
be libel, even if the human values which go into it don't contemplate
the specific libel at issue? Good luck arguing that against Google's
money and lawyer-buddies ...

Wikipedia's Long Daniel Brandt Nightmare Might Be Over (?)

I didn't post about this immediately, and waited for the dust to
settle on recent events. But it looks like peace is breaking out, or
at least major breakthrough in the peace process, in Wikipedia's
long-running and most contentious biography removal request.
In the legendary (in certain circles)
dispute between Wikipedia
and Daniel Brandt, over his request to have his biography deleted
(a request I should note I fully support), on the fourteenth
iteration of the Wikipedian argument-fest that passes for internal
process, he was finally permitted to opt-out from having a biography page.

And there should have been much rejoicing. But skirmishes rage on,
over what to do with the URL for the old page (Brandt wants it to
be a nothing-here notice, it's currently a redirect to his longest-existing
project, NameBase).
And of course, nothing gets done on Wikipedia without some faction
disputing it (Wikipedia does NOT operate by "consensus", it operates
by classic factional power-struggle). But this time he's got
much support from Wikipedia administrators,
so whatever the ultimate result,
it's unlikely there'll be a reversion to the status quo ante.

I've got to give credit to the
brave Wikipedia administrator who
actually took it upon himself to render a decision in this mess. And
rammed through a technical compromise where the internal details were
one of the best real-world accommodating of bitterly opposing
factions, that I've ever seen myself. He couldn't have made it "stick"
without the support of a small-but-powerful administrator faction, but
he apparently managed to avoid deeply offending the weaker but very
loud "ideologue" faction (of which the most extreme inevitably
contested the result, but they seem to be pretty isolated). Well
done. Really well done.

Note to academics looking for paper-fodder: Stop writing those fluffy articles
about how great it is that a cult can get people to work for free. I know
that's where money is (and the attention). But there's a whole group-dynamics
case study laboratory just sitting there for examination (though note
some of the best material goes on in private meeting, where it's not
easily documented).

My Long Wikipedia Nightmare Is Over

Due to recent changes in Wikipedia policy allowing some
consideration of a living person's requests to opt-out of a biography
page, I have now been allowed to
escape
from the burden of having a Wikipedia article. Kudos to Wikipedia administrator
Durova for the sensitive effort on behalf of many people.

I didn't do it lightly, or without a lot of thought. But abilities of such
an article to serve as an
"attractive nuisance" were determinative.

... elevating Gorman to the level of expert pundit on anything related
to the Web suggests that Britannica isn't seeking the intelligent
exchange of ideas, but is looking to build its Technorati rankings
through the now-tiresome back-and-forth of Gorman-says-X,
now-we-disprove-it; I am sure Britannica is now busy finding people to
"respond" to their manufactured controversy, like one of those
episodes on afternoon TV shows I see at the gym where after the wife
tells all, the dazed cuckold is brought onto stage to stammer his chagrin.

But, but, Karen, that's the blog way. The name of the game in this
brave new net world is GET ATTENTION!. The louder, the
more obnoxious, the most bombastic - the better.

So many paradoxes: is the Britannica Blog hypocritically disproving its own
assertions, in terms of flaming for scholarliness? Or is it cleverly
outhyping the hypesters, by using the knee-jerkiness of the
attention-mongers for a kind of judo-maneuvering viral publicity, pushing
the buttons of the blogger mindset so as to get its ideas spread much
further than otherwise? Does the (Encyclopedia) Devil cite scripture
for its own purpose?

One of the posts seems to be proposing a mass movement against demagoguery,
a collective response for individuality.

Before anyone suggests I should try to get in on the action, note
it probably wouldn't be good idea for me to make myself such a large target.
It wouldn't help anything, and the inevitable attacks would be a severe
personal negative.

We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the
ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we
have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach
to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations. While a
number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes
close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy. This is in
part due to the diversity and specificity of Google's product range
and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these
tools, and in part it is due to Google's market dominance and the
sheer size of its user base.

I feel like someone should just set up some sort of system where one
or two bloggers can be picked as the champion-of-battle of the
inevitable reaction.
As in, if you think Google is a poor misunderstood maligned gentle giant,
go to Matt Cutts' Why I disagree with Privacy International. On the other hand, if you believe Google is an enormous corporation subject to all the negative aspects that come with being a huge business which has a deep interest in collecting personal data, read
Shelley Powers On Privacy Redux.
Danny Sullivan
and Donna Bogatin can be the respective seconds.

Given that there's far more people saying things, than things to say, I'll leave it that.

"We Googled You" - Harvard Business Review Interactive Case Study

Hathaway Jones's CEO has found a promising candidate to open the
company's flagship store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the
Internet disqualify her now?

In brief: Managers are asked what they would do about hiring a job candidate
where a Google search discloses some problematic college activism
(h/t many-2-many). It's pretty interesting
to read the responses ("I routinely Google people I'm going to interview or be interviewed by.").

I know what the typical Net evangelist would say, that we should all
be forgiving, and get used to living in a goldfish-bowl. While that's
one common sentiment, note it won't be the evangelist who suffers if
they're wrong. It's far more interesting to see some of the
negative thoughts of people who actually make such decisions.

Amnesty: "The Struggle for Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace"

Amnesty and the Observer Newspaper will use the
internet to link activists from around the world to discuss the
struggle against internet repression and to celebrate the
irrepressible desire of people towards freedom of expression. The
meeting will include participation from internet gurus, cyber
dissidents as well as net activists, writers and journalists. Everyone
will be able to participate to the debate online through a webcast on the day.

Event venue: Online at www.amnesty.org.uk/webcast - broadcasted
from the Human Rights Action Center in London

There's an inverse correlation between the regulation of speech and the freedom of a society. In the new global world of censorware, we all live on Syria's internet, China's internet, filtered by companies whose first priority is to ensure that Beijing is happy with its work.

I was originally going to title this post "Internet Censorship
Conferences Are The New Black", but I decided that was churlish as
well as reeking of sour grapes. I have to remind myself not to have
my assessments clouded by bitterness. Anything that gets the message of
censorware use by repressive governments into the public mind, is good for
all censorware critics.

Wikipedia-Model Search Project Gets Machine Hardware At Last

[Original! Not an echo. Even a micro-"scoop" :-).]

I can report that the "Wikipedia-model" search project (though run by
"Wikia", a for-profit company which is legally entirely distinct from the
nonprofit foundation which owns Wikipedia), the much-hyped potential
Google-killer drawing much attention from Wikipedia's most publicized
founder, now, at last, has some machines for it.

They were even willing to accept my general request for an account.
(i.e. just as an interested person, no free labor promised - and note
this is not a blogger-bribe, since accounts don't denote special treatment).

I can say something slightly relevant here, from my own
experiences in
trying to work anonymously: Anonymity is difficult to maintain. Much
more difficult in practice than the glib proclamations about it that are
usually found in net policy punditry. Many people immediately leap and cite
examples where it's been successful. But they don't give extensive
weight and consideration to examples where it's failed.

Note we will NOT see this case being acknowledged by blog-evangelists
as a serious downside of blogging. Of course, there's an obvious
defensive line: Don't write about legal matters, no anonymity is
absolute, it was stupid - so it's all his fault.

But to me, this goes back to my comparison of
Blogging Effects As Quack Medicine. By the time the negative aspects
have hurt someone, the snake-oil sellers are gone, looking for new suckers.
And the injured person did something wrong anyway, they'll say.